Second Best
by Ayezur
Summary: So he had not pulled away when she kissed him, had kissed her back, and they had fallen and clung together because maybe, just maybe, when you put together two second bests, you could create something that came first. EM, ALW


**Disclaimer: So far from being mine, it's, like, _anti-mine._ As in anti-matter, and stuff.**

**A/Ns: Written as an Xmas prezzie for a friend. Thought y'all might like it.**

It doesn't make any sense. He is acutely aware of this as he pulls her closer, presses his lips into hers, runs a desperate hand down her side. She's pale and he's paler and they fit together perfectly, both of them hiding from the world. He has his mask and she has her silence; he has his music and she, she dances and perhaps he really is the only person to catch a hint of the hunger in her, because all they see are the layers of tulle skirt and chalked satin.

They are both so very hungry, and neither has what they expected but both are, in the end, satisfied, because they can feed off each other's hunger.

* * *

He had never meant for it to happen. She had taken his mask with her; he needed his mask. Nevermind that he never intended to come to the surface again, to open himself to the world. He needed it. He _needed_ –

But she had his mask, and she was in the surface world, so he'd had to go up again and follow her from the opera night after night, waiting for a chance to catch her alone and he had learned more about her than he had ever thought she had. He'd always seen her as appendixed to Christine, not a being with a separate identity. But he had learned…

He knew, now, that she liked romance novels and knew a little Latin, and that she wrote down her dreams in a little book by her bed. He knew that she preferred pastries to sweets, and dried flowers to live ones, though both were acceptable. He knew that she chafed under her mother's restrictions and that she had never been kissed, had never been allowed a suitor, and had been kept away from boys since she was very young. He knew that she liked to take long walks and knew the names and lives of almost every single person in her part of Paris. He knew that she had always wanted a cat or a dog, but had never been allowed one.

He knew that she felt alone in the world, and was bitterly jealous of Christine for having gotten away, for having found love and been loved and been in the spotlight while no one ever seemed to notice tiny little Meg-the-dancer, who didn't sing and couldn't act and only came to life when she danced. He knew she resented and hated the way men acted towards her because she danced, as if she were a piece of flesh without identity or name, just a _thing_ put there to amuse and titillate. He knew she wondered sometimes if she was even real, because no one ever seemed to act as though she was; he knew she felt like nothing more than a dancing-machine, denied a life of her own, but could never stop dancing because it was her whole world.

He knew her, and was a little frightened by how much he saw of his pain in hers.

He saw her pain and thought it ridiculous; she was beautiful, and talented, and her mother was only trying to protect her. He knew Madame Giry had great plans for her daughter, and then realized with a start that maybe Meg also knew, and wanted no part in them.

He had never considered that before. So when Madame Giry had finally left her daughter alone for reasons he didn't bother to overhear, he had crept through the window and down the hall to her room and peered in her door, silent as a cat, to watch her and to wait.

She sat down at her dresser and opened a drawer with a key and there was his mask, pristine and whole, and he wanted to snatch it from her but forced himself to wait. She turned it over and over in her hands, caressing it – as if it was a lover, but that was silly. Then she raised it to her own face, covered half of her perfect features, and grinned so awfully, so like a deathshead (a terrible rictus of bared teeth and pain) that he entered her room before he knew his own actions and stood behind her.

She saw him in the mirror – his face uncovered – and did not scream.

"I knew you would come back for this," she said, gesturing to the mask she still held over her face.

"Give it back."

"And what will you give me for it?"

"Your life."

"And what if that's not enough?"

He was silent. She stood and turned to face him, gripping the mask in both her hands now, holding it to her chest.

"You're the Phantom. You see everything. I'm tired of Little Giry, who should be seen and not heard like the good, obedient girl she is and do as her mother tells her. You know, the only reason Maman helped you is because she wanted Raoul to choose me instead. And I'd be second-best, _again_."

He had known that, but hearing it made it worse somehow. He didn't respond – there was no way he could. They were both second-best, weren't they? Things Christine had used and left behind, discarded toys.

They were both tired of being second-best.

So he had not pulled away when she kissed him, had kissed her back, and they had fallen and clung together because maybe, just maybe, when you put together two second-bests, you could create something that came first. And it didn't make any sense, and they both knew it, but it was all either of them had.

* * *

That was years ago, and he still found himself reaching for her, saw her reaching for him, but somehow they had never found the strength to admit that what began as grief had become something greater. Though he was beginning to sense a time coming when one of them, at least, would have no choice; though he could corner her in dark alleys and snatch her in hallways and lose himself for a time in her softness and warmth, in her acceptance and the knowledge that at least _someone_ saw him for who he was, those brief stolen moments were starting to not be enough. He found himself waking in middle of the night and crying out for her, needing her to be there, so he could hold her and make the dreams go away. 

How many years had it been, anyway? Five – even ten? She was prima ballerina now, and Madame Giry's plans had escalated now that her daughter had blossomed into a true woman. He watched from the rafters as rich, piggish nobleman's eyes followed his dancer across the stage and seethed, knowing that none of them knew who she was and what was worse, none of them cared. She was a piece of flesh, after all, just a pretty little thing to drive themselves in and display like a rare piece of art.

She was more than that to him, and he thought she knew, tried to show her, but could never be sure because he was afraid that if he tried to tell her it would come out wrong and he would lose her. If he lost her, he would have nothing.

But he was almost entirely certain she knew. He saw it in the way she moved, felt it in her responses, sensed it in the quiet, sly smile that would spread across her face when the other girls talked of lovers and such things. He thought she knew, because he tried not to limit their encounters to just sex; it would have been degrading to them both, and what's more… he had found a keen and lovely mind beneath her average features. Madame Giry had not educated her – had not seen the need, and had thought it would make her less attractive – but he had no objections and had always enjoyed teaching. Though to be honest, they taught each other. There was so much of being human he had never known, had never thought he needed to learn…

She had lingered tonight, long after the show was over and the others had left, rehearsing on the main stage. Her mother had gone ahead, trusting her daughter as she had come to in the past years (for Little Giry had been so trustingly obedient since Christine Daae had left, she was like a whole new person). Meg Giry's dedication to her craft was lauded, but only two knew that really very little in the way of rehearsing was accomplished after most of the cast and crew and staff had left. It was a dangerous game, but it was a necessary one. They needed each other; and these days he began to think it went much, much deeper than need.

She danced across the stage and into his arms, as she had so many nights before and she was hungry – he could feel it – but she did not take what he always offered. He knew then that something was wrong and asked, and she looked up at him and said she had missed her monthly courses.

For a moment he could not think nor breathe, and cursed himself for his stupidity. True, it had been years, and they had taken precautions, and nothing had happened – but all it took, he knew, was one time – and there had been times that both had forgotten.

"What do we do?"

"I don't know."

And they clung to each other that night with a desperation like the first time they had come together, each fearing that soon the other would be torn away.

* * *

She hid it for a few months, and then Madame Giry noticed, and he could swear all of Paris heard the screaming. He had taken to following her again in the aftermath of the news, concerned for her safety and for the safety of the child growing inside her. His child. Dear god. 

Madame Giry had demanded to know who the father was and Meg had refused to say. They screamed for hours, all the hate and resentment between them flying loose and he forced himself to stay, knowing that the outcome of this would affect him, too, for he had realized even if she hadn't that they could not be apart from each other. Too much of their hurt could be erased in each other's arms for that.

It ended sooner then he had thought it would, with a sickening crack of flesh-on-flesh and a spreading dark bruise against Meg's perfect, beautiful face and he watched in horror as she spun a little, and fell to the ground with the force of the blow. Madame Giry stood over her, dark and wrathful, chest heaving with the force of her rage and called her the worst names in her limited repertoire, accused her of being ungrateful, of destroying her future while all Meg dared do was sob.

He hadn't dared move.

Madame Giry had locked Meg in her room and gone out, and he had crept in through her window and held her while she sobbed, promising things he had no idea how to make happen, promising her that it would all be right in the end, promising that he wouldn't leave, promising, promising, and he had made the stupid, stupid, _stupid_ mistake of leaving, just for a few minutes, just long enough to call a cab to bring them to the Opera.

He should have taken her with him.

When he came back, she was gone, and so was Madame Giry. So he had done the only thing he could and waited, for hours it seemed, until the day dimmed and Madame Giry came back without Meg, _his_ Meg, and he had terrified the old woman but he was beyond caring. Twice now she had caused something he wanted, something he _needed_ to be taken from him. First she had led the boy down to take Christine away, and now she had taken away his Meg, his beautiful dancer who looked at his bared face and saw only any other man.

So he had terrified her, screamed at her, and gotten the name of the convent where she had hidden his Meg away. He warned her against interfering with him – for though Meg had softened him and held his demons at bay he was still the Phantom, damn it all, and his word was law – and stalked out to find his Meg and take her back.

It was a good thing he had quit with God years ago, because surely he incurred eternal damnation for the terror he left in his wake when he stormed through the convent to where they had locked up his Meg. They had taken away her pretty clothes and given her a rough habit, shorn her beautiful blonde mane but it was his Meg and he had carried her out of there, rage warring with love, and taken her far below the earth where no one could ever hurt her or take her away again.

She had wept, thinking he would no longer find her beautiful, would not want her or their child, and he had held through the second longest night of his life and promised her, over and over, that he would not leave, he loved her, he would not leave her, ever, and by the time dawn broke she had fallen asleep in his arms and he could swear that she almost believed him.

But she was not meant to live in the dark, underground, and he knew that. So he left her and made the fastest trip of his life back to the flat she shared with her mother, gathering the things he knew she treasured and then to his bank (for he had a bank, and many profitable investments; the wages he had demanded of the managers had only been one more method of control) to arrange for transport and a house. He would take her away from Paris, for he didn't dare come to light there – the Phantom was too notorious – and that done, gotten back down just as she was waking up.

After a week, she felt strong enough to leave, and they did. He didn't dare let her out of his sight and she teased him for it but he knew, by the way she leaned into him, that she enjoyed it, the feeling of being protected and needed and loved. He didn't care anymore if she loved him back; she had consented to be his (they would be married as soon as they were settled), she did not fear him, she accepted him, and she was going to have his child.

They were on the last leg of the journey and he had been lulled into a passive trance by the rhythm of the train and her warm body against his when she said something that jerked him out of all passivity and made him flush with humiliation at his own stupidity.

"You never did tell me your name."

He had gone so many years without a name that he had forgotten he had ever had one; she must love him, if only a little, to be so close to him for all that time and never even know his name.

"Meg – I am so sorry – "

"It's all right. Only – I had not thought before now that we would ever be able to – to…"

"Live as any other couple."

She nodded, her face red.

"I thought that was why you never told me," she said, quietly. "To make it hurt less, when things fell apart."

When she said that he grabbed her and held her, burying his face in the crook of her neck. That she could even begin to think –

"I will never leave you, Meg. _Never_."

His voice was fierce.

"My name is Erik. I never had a last name."

"Erik…"

She said his name slowly, tasting it, and he realized suddenly that even Christine had never known his real name. This was the last real mystery…

She leaned into him, pressing herself against him and relaxing, holding him as if they had all the time in the world… which, he realized, they did.

"It suits you."

And he knew, in that moment, that they had not been wrong that night when they had come together, both second-best, in the hopes of creating something that would come first.


End file.
